Sports Business Academy

Are you passionate about sports and keen to study sports management in college (or even turn your passion into a career)? Consider taking a deeper dive this summer at the Wharton Sports Business Academy.

Sponsored by the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Sports Business Initiative (WSBI), the Wharton Sports Business Academy (WSBA) is a summer institute that provides an opportunity for talented rising high school juniors and seniors to study sports business leadership at the Wharton School. This program teaches students about ownership, sports agents, marketing, media, and labor as they meet and learn from leaders in the sports business world. The program examines various academic disciplines as they apply to the sports industry with an overview of the business and legal aspects of various intercollegiate, Olympic and professional sports enterprises. Students visit some of the region’s most important facilities, and ultimately gain insight into the leadership, management, and increasingly global nature of the sports business. Through academic and co-curricular activities, WSBA students have the opportunity to test their potential as future sports business leaders.

How do I expand this narrative arc? If your narrative arc includes sports, and you want to show that you’re more than just a great athlete or super fan, think about expanding and deepening both with one of these opportunities:

• Spend part of your summer attending The New York Times Summer Academy – Sports, in which you’ll learn more about the intersection of sports and business

• Create public art on a local basketball court with Project Backboard

• Help your school establish a better concussion protocol with Heads Up

• Start a fundraiser for a sports team in a nearby low income community with Support Youth Sports

• If you’re great at math and love sports, consider attending Wharton’s Moneyball Summer Academy

Hot Tip: This is a great summer program for a student that is genuinely interested in the intersection between business and sports, but must be strongly supported by their narrative arc. If you are going to do this type of program, Wharton is the best and most prestigious places to do it. In addition, the program is taught by Wharton professors themselves and not by a third party company. See below for more information about paid summer programs in general.

IMPORTANT NOTE ABOUT SUMMER PROGRAMS: College admissions officers are very adept at identifying “resume padders”: expensive, one-off programs paid for by your parents which do not mesh with your narrative arc. Therefore, make sure any summer program or course you consider falls into one (or more) of these four buckets: 

• Highly selective/competitive

• Totally unique + linked to your narrative arc

• Evidence of adulthood (long hours, multi-year commitment or simply hard work)

• A jumping off point or expansion for an authentic narrative arc. 

If none of the above apply, a program could still have value to you if it allows you to test a potential interest. However, if it does not end up being a jumping off point for further interests, then you may not want to mention it in your high school resume